


The Hero's Petition

by NevillesGran



Series: Tales of Whitestone Castle [1]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: (it's better if you don't read the character tags), Alternate Universe - Dark, Fairy Tale Elements, Gen, sometimes you just gotta evil brotp #aesthetic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-20
Updated: 2017-02-20
Packaged: 2018-09-25 21:48:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9847091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NevillesGran/pseuds/NevillesGran
Summary: Far in the northern reaches of Tal'Dorei, the city of Whitestone lies half-buried under snow and dark trees. They say monsters live there, now, ruled by worse. They say strangers are hunted and killed. They say to enter is death, particularly to enter the castle.They say sometimes, if you're very brave or very lucky, or merely very desperate, it may be worth the risk.[note: renamed!]





	

They say that only monsters live in Whitestone, but you find the town mostly human, and mostly friendly. You are a stranger with nothing to trade, they barely need ask why you’re here, and the kinder ones don’t - just offer you sympathetic looks as you pick your way through the leaf litter on the streets. There used to be a true city here, the stories say, and the buildings are still visible, flecked with shining stone. But the forest wove into the streets so long ago that only the major cartways are clear of roots and bramble, and those are still covered in slick snow and ice, this time of year. Only the locals walk without checking their footing every third step. You are weary, have slept little and eaten less on your journey. You check your feet every second step, and stumble on the others. At least there is little snow on the ground under the trees themselves

A kind innkeeper, a gnome-woman with golden hair, offers you a mug of ale for free, with a sad frown that she doesn’t quite hide. The gentle touch of her hand fills you with more energy than the drink, but she tucks her necklace back under her shirt before you can glimpse what deity she might worship. The stories agree: there are no gods allowed in Whitestone save the lord and lady who rule it.

A handful of roughs at the bar jeer, laugh, start polishing their weapons and wondering loudly how long you’ll last, and if they’ll get to join in the hunt. The innkeep shushes them and offers you a night’s rest as well, but you walk out instead. Another gnome sits just outside the door, an older man with a lute humming in his idle fingers. He glances you up and down and says, “You’re going up to the castle, then? You should turn back, kid. That’s a road for desperate men.”

You adjust the sit of your bindle even though you just did so a second ago, even though it has nothing in it now but one last crust-end of bread, and say, “I know.” You are a very, very desperate man.

The road up to the castle is one of the wide, clear ones, though the forest on the sides only gets thicker as you approach. The road is feet deeper in snow than the cartways below, but you wade through it to avoid the dark, twisted trees, the vines hovering like they’re waiting to reach out and trip you and the poison-bright flowers with thorns as long as your arm. Sometimes you think you hear growls, see flashing, hungry eyes. Above it all break the towers of the castle, white with stone rather than ice, pristine but for the vines climbing up their sides like a territorial claim. It doesn’t look so menacing from here. It almost sparkles in the sun. You are fairly sure you can only  _ imagine _ the power crackling through stone and plant alike. You are no mage. Decent with a dagger, and slipping through the dark unseen, but not a lick of magic.

At the top, at the edge of the walls all covered in bracken and vines, you meet a bearded stone giant with a dark steel sword unsheathed at his hip. The blade drips blood and shadow in the sunlight. No, not a giant - just a goliath, grey-skinned as granite. “Just” a goliath. You put a hand on the meager dagger on your belt. There are many stories of guardians at gates, who must be fought in order to reach the treasure or even hope of treasure inside (you’ve listened to a lot of stories, okay? You always wanted to be an adventurer. A hero.) Not usually in tales of Whitestone, though. But you didn’t walk across two thirds of Tal’Dorei to flinch and turn back now. 

“Hey,” he says, with a voice like a rockslide. “You’re the new kid who’s come to ask for somethin’, yeah?”

He grins and you can see blood on his teeth as well, and hovering in the rage banked just behind his eyes. You are tired of being called a ‘kid’ in this town, but you just swallow. Poised on the balls of your feet, ready to dodge at a moment’s notice.

“Yes.”

“Cool.” He turns, beckoning with one giant hand. “I’m t’ take you in to the throne room.”

The castle is old and strong, the sort built for defense rather than any sort of beauty - but now it is flush with vines and flowers, and every gate and door, in the walls and wings and scattered outbuildings, is crushed under the weight of their creeping strength. Only the central keep, pure, shining whitestone, stands entirely intact, and even inside there, the walls are all but smothered under plant life. Only traces of ancient paint and tapestries glimpse through the green, lit by sunlight from the arrow slit windows. Yet the floors are perfectly clear, and the goliath’s steps echo on the pale stones. Yours do not. 

The throne room, when you enter it, is much the same. Brighter than one might expect from a dark lord’s lair, lit not by sunlight but by unnerving lightning crackling in glass balls around the walls. The same sterilized-clear stone floor, and every inch of wall save one great tapestry covered in green life that looks like it would reach out and consume you if you drew too close, or even just looked away for an unwary second. 

But look away you do, because in front of the tapestry - a stylized, skeletal tree, reaching from dark night to a burning sun - is the dais with the thrones. 

The Lord de Rolo looks exactly as you might have imagined, exactly as the stories say: snow-white hair over a face too young for how long he’s been alive, and wisps of black smoke drifting from his hands, his collar. A cloak of midnight and a regal gentleman’s uniform in his once-vaunted family’s deep blue and brown, and gold. A guard stands beside him, a blank-faced half-elf woman in hunting leathers, with a longbow in her hands and, on her other side, a glowering bear. You would startle at that, but the lord’s eyes catch you: blue ice, you see as the goliath’s shove propels you forward. The sky itself frozen over. It’s at once incomprehensible and perfectly, terrifyingly clear why to him the stories attribute the weapons that spit raging fire fierce enough to break plate armor, walls, and mountains, and burn men’s souls from their flesh.

Leaning her head on his shoulder, crowned with antlers and crimson hair, is the last Queen of the Air Ashari. She is not what you expect. She sits sideways on her throne like an indolent apprentice rather than a wielder of dark, elemental forces, a commander of monsters and forests and every wild thing in the world. Her dress is light, greens and oranges and every leaf color in between. Her eyes and her smile are warm and she strokes gently at the the hair of a young man seated at the foot of her throne, a match to the woman with the bow. He looks less like a guard and more like a pet, with dark, loose clothing and a slim, leafy vine twisted around his throat like a leash. The other end is wrapped around her wrist. He leans back into her touch, eyes half-lidded, watching you rather than the dagger he flips idly in one hand.

“Well?” drawls Lord de Rolo. His perfect posture speaks of ease, like he could hold court for hours, days, but his tone brooks no delay. “You came to beg a favor, didn’t you?”

This is it. This is what the stories agree on, all the disparate, clashing tales you’ve heard from louts trying to impress each other in bars, from wanderers at campfires, from your mother chasing you to bed with threats of monsters. They agree: if you brave the monsters, if you walk through the forest and the half-ruined castle of ice-white stone, if you are brave and pure and true and above all have an  _ interesting _ challenge to present...you might walk out again. With your mind, body, and soul intact, and moreover with every gift the Lord and Lady of the Castle have to give. 

If. If, if, if. You can scarcely believe they are real, these figures of darkest legend. You are brittle with fear, but this is it. This is your chance. This is the only way you will ever be a hero, can ever make up for the fact that you walked away from home just in time for everyone you’ve ever known to burn and die behind you.

You rake one hand through your ash-blond hair, a nervous habit your father used to beat you for. 

“Yes, sir. Ma’am. Sire...s. You majesties.” Oh, gods. You tell yourself to shut up, stand up straight, remember the speech you’ve been running over in your head for  _ weeks _ .

You pull it together. Be a hero, gods damn it.

“My name is Kynan Leore, son of Harold the Butcher of Emon. Lately of Emon.” You swallow an ember in your throat. “I, um, bring news of an exciting challenge, if you’re interested. Which you should be. You probably know, but Emon was recently razed by dragons, just...gone.”

The words fall limply, because you’d looked back and it was  _ burning _ , from even as far as Kymal. And you only knew what had happened, then, because the dragons flew overhead and did the same to Westruun, just stops down the caravan road.

“There were four of them,” you manage, because you’ve seen and you’ve asked. “A red one sits in Emon, now; a black one in Westruun, a white-”

The druidess yawns, still leaning lazily on the Lord’s shoulder. “Why should we care?”

You flounder, thrown off your speech. No: you are prepared for this.

“Because it would be a contest, and an adventure. You could be even more legendary than you are now. You could, um, expand your territory, if you wanted, and-”

“Would there be gold?” the guardswoman interrupts. Her voice is even more lilting than the Ashari Queen’s.

Lord de Rolo looks up at her reprovingly. You think you would freeze under that glare but she just stares back, eyes glittering with something much darker than greed. You could swear, for the barest sliver of a second, that he smiles.

Then the glacial stare is back on you, and again he demands, “Well? What of the hoards?”

“Yes! All the gold in Emon, and Westruun, and- and I think Draconia. No one knows where the green one is. The last dragon. And probably tons of magical items, if you want that. Or- or mechanical devices.”

“I dunno, Percy,” says the Queen. “It’s not like it’s  _ our _ city under attack.” But she is sitting up now, facing you properly. 

He props his chin on his hand and his elbow on his knee, leaning forward to look at you like he’s taking you apart in his mind. You can feel the goliath still standing behind you, nearly twice as tall as you and easily thrice as broad.

The Lord’s gaze turns you inside-out, but it slides gently over to his…(wife? Lover? Ally of convenience? The tales aren’t consistent.) 

“It could be a nice reason to go abroad, but perhaps a bit much for just the two of us. Or even the handful.” 

His gaze flicks back to you and the goliath, and the bear and the twins. (The twins are watching each other, now, some silent conversation of widened eyes between them. You don’t recognize them any more than you do the goliath. They aren’t in any of the tales.)

“I’ll defer to you, my dear,” the Lord de Rolo finishes.

The Ashari Queen jerks her pet’s leash. His attention snaps back to her, penitent, but hers remains on you. You try and probably fail to not let the hope spill across your face. She chews her lip as she decides.

“...Nah.” She stretches, her arms limber above her head. “I kinda want to kill something  _ now _ , you know? I know you like all the planning, Percy, but-”

He leans back, waving an open palm in her direction. “I said I would defer to you, and so I shall.”

“Wha- no! You’re just- You can’t-”

“Thanks,” she says with a bright grin, ignoring you completely. She slips the vine off her wrist. The half-elf at her feet doesn’t move but to watch her. “It’s just been so long since we had a proper hunt.”

“You can’t!” you repeat more loudly. “You- you’re supposed to be legends! I walked two weeks to see you! You can’t just not even try!”

“I can do anything I want!” the Queen says hotly. 

You can see, now, that her golden eyes aren’t just warm; they’re sharp and remorseless as a hunting cat’s. The plants on the walls start to move with her wrath as she stands.  


“And you,” she adds, and her smile is even crueler. “You should start running.”

“You can’t just ignore thousands of people  _ dying! _ ” She may be hot, but there is an ember  _ burning _ in your throat, and an entire home already ash every time you close your eyes. Desperate man. “You have to do something!”

You don’t even see him move; there is just a blast of sound and an explosion of shards at your feet, and something shining embedded inches deep in the stone as you spring back, bleeding. 

“You heard the Lady Keyleth,” Lord de Rolo says mildly, still reclining. The barrel of his weapon rises to stares you down. “You’re boring us both, now.  _ Run _ .”

There is a massive white tiger where the druidess once stood, with those same golden eyes, and she snarls. It echoes.

You turn and run.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Critical feedback (pun intended) welcome!


End file.
